How to Stay Sane

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An Economist Best Book of the Year
Everyone accepts the importance of physical health; isn’t it just as important to aim for the mental equivalent? Philippa Perry has come to the rescue with How to Stay Sane — a maintenance manual for the mind.
Years of working as a psychotherapist showed Philippa Perry what approaches produced positive change in her clients and how best to maintain good mental health. In How to Stay Sane, she has taken these principles and applied them to self-help. Using ideas from neuroscience and sound psychological theory, she shows us how to better understand ourselves. Her idea is that if we know how our minds form and develop, we are less at the mercy of unknown unconscious processes. In this way, we can learn to be the master of our feelings and not their slave.
This is a smart, pithy, readable book that everyone with even a passing interest in their psychological health will find useful.
Review“[Perry's] inviting tone (complimented by lighthearted illustrations throughout) and friendly prose make this an accessible addition to the School of Life publications.”—*Publishers Weekly
“Using stories from her therapy practice to illustrate her points as well as numerous exercises to conduct alone, with a loved one or within a group, Perry brings new light to a well-visited subject.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Perry offers guidance that is both revelatory and achievable.”—Booklist
*“In an age of moral and practical confusions, the self-help book is crying out to be redesigned and rehabilitated. The School of Life announces a rebirth with a series that examines the great issues of life, including money, sanity, work, technology, and the desire to alter the world for the better.”—Alain de Botton, The School of Life Series Editor
“The School of Life offers radical ways to help us raid the treasure trove of human knowledge.”—The Independent on Sunday (London)
About the AuthorPHILIPPA PERRY is a psychotherapist and writer who has written pieces for The Guardian, The Observer, Time Out, and Healthy Living magazine and has a column in Psychologies Magazine. In 2010, she wrote the graphic novel Couch Fiction, in an attempt to demystify psychotherapy. She lives in London and Sussex with her husband, the artist Grayson Perry, and enjoys gardening, cooking, parties, walking, tweeting, and watching telly.

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123 printed pages

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Quotes

gporskovhas quoted6 years ago
To begin self-observing, ask yourself these questions:
What am I feeling now?
What am I thinking now?
What am I doing at this moment?
How am I breathing?
These simple questions are important because when we have answered them, we are in a better position to proceed to the next question:
What do I want for myself in this new moment?3
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Janet Bernahas quoted3 years ago
Each of us comes from a mother and a father, or from a sperm bank, and each of us was brought up by our parents or by people standing in for them. Many of us have siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins. All of these people have an impact on who we are, as do their ancestors. Those ancestors, too, had problems and triumphs, and any learning or habits these experiences gave them they tended to pass down.
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Janet Bernahas quoted3 years ago
As I have said previously, sometimes a new behaviour feels false or unreal but is merely unfamiliar. In my experience what ‘feels’ true might not actually be the truth, or good for us; it might merely be familiar. And, conversely, what feels ‘false’ might not be; it might just be new.
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On the bookshelves

Shasha Setiyadi
2020
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